Will speech recognition assistants like Alexa catch on?

iPhone users would kick a get out of this headline, thinking, “well, it already HAS caught on. I have Siri and blah blah blah…” right? Speech recognition systems such as Alexa and Siri probably still have a long way to go, but would you purchase one of these for use in your home? It’s one thing when Apple already provides Siri free with the iPhone. But if you have to pay in order to purchase a robot to talk to and order things for you, would you do it?

The challenge with these speech recognition systems is they still can’t really interconnect with everything in your home. Let’s say they could. When that happens, the robot will be able to turn your heat up and down, unlock the doors to your home, open windows and close them, turn the over on or off, start making a cup of coffee…the ideas are endless. Someday, this is where things could be when the Internet of Things really starts to take off. However, these speech recognition systems are still too early – they’re just not useful enough yet to warrant a purchase by many.

You will also find hesitation to purchase in the minds of consumers because of the security component. Siri does collect information about us in order to offer us different products. Siri knows what we like and thus, Apple now knows what we like. Too big brother? Well, it’s true. If you’ve ever seen the movie Minority Report, our future will be just like that. The big corporations want to know what we eat, what we do for work, our buying habits, what we like, our hobbies, etc. The more that the consumer industry knows about us, the more they can target their ads more effectively against things that we like.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Minority Report, you may remember the futuristic advertising. The advertising that we will see in the future is likely similar to this – in fact, it’s already there in many respects.

Even Google does this now, and has for many years as it relates to advertisements displaying on websites, too. Google keeps track of what websites you visit and will show you ads based on what Google thinks you would be interested in purchasing.